Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 294 | We Should All Be Millionaires: What Holds Travel Advisors Back
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner that also wants you to build the business and not just a second job for yourself. This is take 13 of this episode. I'm about to lose my mind, people. Anyway, I don't know why this episode is like, nope, not gonna work. So today is day 294, and I'm doing from 292, 293, 294. 'Cause there's three hundred and sixty-five episodes if you're new. all about three big books that changed my life to really take this travel side hustle seriously and turn it into a business. And you too can read these books. I hope they can help you. Maybe you've read them. So a little back history. I have built other businesses. I have been pretty well, at least side hustling, since I was in my early twenties. Like a serialpreneur type. That's me. That's me. And it's not like I had a husband. I was a single mom. I didn't have a lot of financial support. I didn't have anyone else paying my bills. So I've bootstrapped everything. Like legitimately bootstrapped, not Have someone else. 100% financially supporting me while I build a business. So I know a thing or two about starting from scratch. And I sold it my company back in I don't remember. I sold my cleaning business. I started that up in I think end of 14 and sold it by early 2017 it was bringing in about a million dollars a year, which is like a nice little small business as nothing to write home about. I had 11 employees. I could pay myself about 60, 70 a year or something like that. I don't remember. And I decided to take a side quest and took a job as a butler for a billionaire's family after I sold the company right around the same time. And I started my travel side hustle like almost immediately. Then the pandemic hit and I was like, well, good night. What am I gonna do? Do I go find another job that's like that job that I accepted? Was took place in extremely rural Missouri, and the salary I had as a butler was like unheard of in that area. for many, many careers, right? So going trying to go back into hospitality, they were like, you can be an events manager for a hotel and resort for $14 an hour. And I was like, You guys don't know what you're doing. So I'd Kept running my travel agency when it went all in on that. And these three books helped me. So that was a little bit of a ramble. I'm very nervous that this episode isn't gonna be recording. And of course, the lowest quality take will be the one. It's fine. so 292. If you want to just quick recap, day 292 was the emyth. I highly recommend it. Get the revisited version, not the original. Because I think the original is written in the early 90s or something. So It's a little out of date. And then the next book is Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield Thomas. Today's episode is about the book We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rogers. And I love this book. So the preface of this book is you can be successful and you can do so much more than the people in your environment, your current environment, tell you you could do. And also as you Grow towards success, you need to be very aware of who you surround yourself with. But you can do this with baby steps. So I'm gonna see if this'll work. my gosh, I think it's working. I'm so because I have my show notes in a different window. my gosh. And I think that's what it was, and I did all this. I'm my own IT support over here and producer, writer. I'm like if I'm like the Tommy Wisseau of podcasts. If you know, you know. Most of my audience doesn't know that. Okay. my gosh, hold on a second. Let me get to I I bulk write like the main points of my notes for fourteen episodes at a time. And today and tomorrow at the very end of my fourteen, so I gotta scroll. Thanks. Thanks for your patience. Just laugh about Tommy Wusseau for a second. Okay, here's the we should all be millionaire stuff. And it's still recording. Okay. This is gonna be a weird episode. Come along, come along for the ride. Alright, so Roger's main argument is that far more people are capable of building ex like substantial wealth than we actually believe it's possible for us. And the barrier is less about your raw ability to do it. And more often about the environment. Okay, so and this kind of ties, I'm so scared. Okay, it's still recording. This ties back to like my experience with bootstrapping a lot of businesses. And this really helped me like remember, remember Simba, who you are. Because I had kind of fallen away from that just by taking a job for like two years. I'd fallen away from like, yeah, I have to do all this stuff. And It was a nice reminder for me. And if you have never been self-employed, it's a really good eye-opener for you. So your environment your your environment shapes, helps vastly shape your reality. And your environment is what you consume on social media, what books you read, what music you listen to, the people you spend your time with. the cleanliness of your house, the food you eat, the amount of time you spend outside, like it's not just you need this new software. it is literally everything can easily influence your life. And it's I'm a this I think this is why I'm a huge fan of underdogs because I've been the underdog so many times because the environments I've been in in the past has been a lot of just give up and go be normal like the rest of us kind of mentality. And I've had people tell me like good luck, you're never gonna make it. just a lot of that in my life. So I'm a huge fan of the underdog. And I have a lot of empathy for anyone that's riding the struggle bus because it's like I've done it, you could do it. I'm not any kind of magical wizard, although I wish I was. But if I could do it, you could do it. Okay. Anyway, it's also about your beliefs that you've decided to internalize, which guess what, chicken butt? All your limiting beliefs stem from your early childhood environment. Hmm. But your beliefs about money and your own capability and daily choices that either move towards your goals or help keep you stuck. Okay. And this is really difficult. So a lot of very successful entrepreneurs, you come up with your own way of staying disciplined. You do need a lot of discipline to be successful. And it sucks so badly if you are sick and you're like, still gotta post content. You know, like you cannot take a day off until you've built enough of a team to help alleviate some of your tasks, right? If you actually want to build A lot of wealth. Now, if you are in a situation where this is going to be like you just want to make a hundred thousand as a little side gig and have a part-time VA because you don't have to take care of all of your financial responsibilities, you have someone that's been doing that for you for five, ten, fifteen, twenty plus years, then great, take a day off. Okay. But if you want to make this an actual legacy to pass down to your children to have it be sustainable and to be able to provide work. For others, and I'll get into this in a second. because you're like, bitch, what are you talking about? Then you need to have an in and like an immense amount of discipline. There's going to be sacrifices in one aspect of your life or another. You cannot eat your cake and eat it. Like you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't, you cannot, if you're actually building something far bigger than making sure you can go to the spa twice a month. Okay. And like a family vacation a year. So you can stop listening. Don't even read that book. If you're just like, no, I want to stay small because I have someone else that takes care of everything for me. You can just stop listening to this episode. You can unsubscribe to me because I'm not about that. And here's the thing: if you are exposed on social media because this happens. Two like negative information. the economy's down, everybody's broke. I mean that is a reality, don't get me wrong. But as an example, at the time of recording this, I'm seeing a lot of that on our feeds because the elections are coming up and that pay attention, that stuff ramps up a lot right before an election cycle in the United States. But they're not lying. There are people really struggling economically. And so you can take that one of two ways when you are building your business. And I want you to think about this the next time you see that, or if you see it on the news, I might and you start thinking, well, the economy sucks. No one's gonna book travel with me. Therefore, I'm not gonna make any money. Therefore, I should just give up. Or maybe I should just throw in another niche, or maybe I should add another service and just more more more trying to go against I don't I wouldn't say go against the grind, but you're just grinding more and more like a hamster on a wheel just spinning, spinning, spinning, like gotta make money, gotta make money. When if you see that kind of content where people on social or on news, on the on news, there's no the news, it's just news. On news, on social. But when you see that kind of content and those stories popping up on your feed, however you consume media. You need to be very careful to not let it affect you in a way to where you start spiraling and doom and glooming all over the place because you've convinced yourself now, uh-oh. Economy's gone to crap. I'm not gonna make any money. I'm gonna sell AI generated pictures of feet on OnlyFans now because this is the only option apparently. And I'm gonna go buy this other course scheme to like the stuff I see that people are pushing on how to be a UGC creator and all that stuff. That's one way you could go when you start seeing that doom and gloom. Or you might be like, well, I'm above that, but I'm just gonna make a bunch of courses and I'm gonna make a bunch of like I don't know, destination guides, whatever the heck it is, so you can sell that instead of travel. Okay. Those are like the negative sides. If you are truly in this to build a business regarding travel. That's a lot of like getting you away from booking travel. And you might, you will, not might, you will have years, you will have months, you will have quarters where business is down and you're slow. And that's why I'm like, be careful with how you manage your finances. So, anyway, you can go that way when you see a lot of media thrown at you that everything's doom and gloom, the world's gonna fall apart. No, everyone's struggling. You can take it and be like, I'm in that circle. Now, the other way you can do it is you can reverse that and be like, How can I help these people? if I advertise to the haves and get out generate a lot of revenue to the haves, I can donate to charities for the have nots. Create jobs for those who are in the have not situation. Highly skilled people can't find a decent. Decent job, but maybe they aren't the type to build their own business, right? I can support all these small local businesses to keep them afloat as well. And this was something that I did with my cleaning business because it was right around the whole 08 recession time and people were like recovering from it. And I got a lot of flack about No one can afford cleaning. Why would anybody hire you? And it's like, well, you can't afford cleaning, but there are people who can't afford it. And I took that opportunity to go back to the haves, because there are the haves and the have-nots, and marketed to them and did my services so well. And would charged a reasonable amount that I could create jobs for those in the have nots, and they would cry to me at their first like tax season after they'd had been hired by me because they were in like the not extreme provert poverty tax bracket. So you can do the same thing with your travel agency instead of fighting. the power. You know what I mean? Like low key, I feel like we could take we can't get to the billionaires, obviously. But if we could be a part of the economy by getting the haves to work with us and then turn around and create jobs for the have nots to bring back the middle class. I think anyone with an entrepreneurial bug absolutely needs to go in that way, that mentality, instead of just Building something for yourself, okay? And that's when you can have a mission that's so much more than you. And when you have a mission that's so much more than you, I'm going on a tangent here. In my opinion, if you have a mission that's so much more than you, and this is for like the greater good, you're not gonna be as concerned about revenue. Because you're not in a scarcity mindset, because you're on a mission now. You're fully stepping into a leadership mindset. And you can't be scarce when there's a leadership mindset. And you go all in on supporting other people. Maybe that's just me. This is gonna be a little bit of a rambly episode, but I love to create jobs. I for other people. I love to create opportunities for other people. That's why I help travel advisors. Like I want you to have a business. Like I want And you can do your business however you want. But I would love to see more travel advisors that I've mentored come back and be like, I've created two jobs for two women that couldn't find anything with their at college education that allowed them to work remotely and be able to take care of their children. And I've I've done that for two people, plus I can pay myself. Wit I mean how cool does that sound? Or just there's so many different ways you could do it. I'm I like to go down the path of creating jobs. Anyway. That was my crazy rant about the media coming at you. So the next time you start seeing stuff, And there are I mean many this is like an entrepreneurial mindset to have because this is an amazing thing that you can leverage because like you're able to create jobs, like you can do that. And when people are like doom and gloom, like this industry's had so many layoffs because everyone's using AI and my life is over because of AI. No, like that whole those were like top-tier employees. And if you're making enough money in your business, you have access to having those employees help you build your business even bigger. My deal is, this is a this is getting kind of political and weird. My deal is overall, I don't think we are a capitalist state. I think we are gone full corporatism. We need to bring capitalism back. We need to do it with small business owners. We need to help and support each other grow. And also not everyone's cut out to be a leader and an entrepreneur. Like some people are just like, nope, I don't want that responsibility. But if you're listening to this, you probably do want a little bit of that responsibility. Okay, so what stuck with me the most in this book, we can all make money. We can make significant money in any business we choose. What holds most of us back isn't a lack of ability. It's the environment, the beliefs that we have, and then the choice. made repeatedly to do the doom scrolling to believe the industry that you're some miracle unicorn amazing person if you hit a certain revenue. It yeah it's nice but more than two percent of people should be making more than enough money to just create a second job. Like I'm serious about this. We need Ugh we're not gonna get into that. I mean, I'm gonna look it up actually. Let me look this up. I'm gonna do average insurance. Because insurance is pretty similar. yeah, the average in the fiftieth percentile, the median average income for an insurance agent, which is kind of similar, like you are ten ninety-nine, $63,000 a year. Most travel agents after five years can't break sixty thousand dollars a year. Why is that, guys? We need to be doing better. And I think part of the environment is the I've got a whole conspiracy theory about that. Like, let's all do more. We can all do more. Anyway, there's not a judgment, like I really like I just feel like it's beaten into us that it's really hard to make more than fifty K a year as a travel agent. And it's just like a low wage little side hustle gig. And I have my conspiracy theories around that because we are predominantly women. We are predominantly women who are maybe stay-at-home mothers or wish to become stay-at-home mothers. and there's a reason why the income is kept low. If you're in the success circle, you can talk to me about it. But do me scrolllies, the environment you're in, believing that it's nearly impossible and you're some amazing person if you book a million dollars a year or plus in travel. No, like that should be the norm. That should be the norm after three years, in my opinion. And I want to change that. But that b all that stuff is stalled growth. Because then you're just thrown like, just buy this stuff, do this course, do this training and like all the noise in the industry. When it's like you just put your head down, believe that you can do it, and ignore it everybody else, being like, Well, I don't know, most agents don't do that their first two years, or, Well, I don't know, you probably should upgrade this and do this and do this. And no, I wanna build my business my way. I'm going on a rant in this episode a little bit. I'm gonna calm down. It's easy to really overlook all of that because you think it's like, okay, I'm doing what everyone else is supposed to be doing, but no one else is really making money with everything that they're doing. it doesn't and it doesn't even feel like like doomy scrollies, the doomy scrollies, I do it. We all do it. It's fine. It doesn't even feel like an active decision that you're making, but it functions like one. And I'm like, I hate the fact that I do the doom scrolls. But I'll do it. Anyway, so it's all baby steps. Rogers is super direct. Success is never overnight. It never has been for anyone, regardless of how their highlight reel might make it look. Anyone presenting their success as sudden or effortless is not being honest with you. There's something that they're not telling you. So be very wary. Like for me to have like the zero dollars in revenue to 18 months of having 30 groups, that still was bare that was like the lowest I wanted to be. And it took 18 months to start getting that revenue in. I did get fees and stuff up front. Don't get me wrong about that. But it wasn't life, like I couldn't hire anybody else for a long time. and still that was only like three three fifty in gross revenues. The second I paid myself a salary of sixty-five thousand, that instantly took a hundred thousand dollars away. The second I hired an employee at thirty-seven thousand, that was another hundred fifty, sixty thousand dollars taken away. So nearly half of it was just gone for payroll. And then you have to have money set aside for rainy days, which thank God I did do that because I had two years of rainy days. Okay? After that. it and you have to understand that there's a lot of growth with entrepreneurship and it happens through consistent, very unglamorous, very boring little baby steps, the batching, the outreach, the cold outreach, the follow-up on the quotes, the systems that you're building. Done repeatedly over a long enough time horizon for them to actually compound. And you can set everything up in place and you also have to market, right? Like it's just like you gotta get into the system and build that discipline for yourself. It's so easy to compare your own visible progress to someone else's visible successes without seeing what's actually building it. Most people don't see your late nights spent building proposals or building booking pages after a full day of client calls or a full day of another job. They don't see the social engagements that you've had to turn down, like Tiana from Princess and the Frog. They don't understand it either. And anyone telling you you can do this without missing any of this, that is they are not being honest. If you can, like I said in the beginning of this episode, if you can do it, you have someone else paying literally all of your other bills. Your mortgage, your car payment, your car insurance, your health insurance, your co-pays, your savings, and retirement. That is the only way you can have your cake, eat it too. And be an overnight success, but you really aren't even a success. Like you couldn't sell what you've got. It's nothing like there is no asset there. I'm so sick of that being pushed around the industry too. So they don't see all of the stuff you're doing. The new clothes you're denying yourself buying. The small luxuries that you've skipped so you can reinvest in your business instead with the proper decisions. Your travel agency, if you are serious about it, being a business, is more than something that looks good on the gram, people. It's built on a very long list of unseen, unglamorous trade-offs that nobody outside of your life will ever witness. And it's a very lonely, isolating time. So if you've been waiting for the right environment, nope, you create that. The right beliefs, you control your beliefs. Or the right moment, you create the moments, to fully commit to outreach, consistency in marketing, baby steps. Her message, Rachel Rogers' core message of that book, is challenging that I need to wait. I'm not ready. The capability is there. What's actually within your control today is the environment that you build around yourself, the beliefs you choose to examine and update, and the very next small specific baby steps. One more time today. Just one little baby step. Okay. I'm I'm a huge fan of Rachel Rogers and I believe that 100% too. Like we can all make we should all be millionaires. We should all be millionaires. And I think I've mentioned this in other episodes. If we were like 100% pure communist about The travel industry. And we got even Stevens, number of sales, bookings. Every single travel agent existing in the United States today should be making $120,000 a year. Like that should be, if it's even Stevens, there are some who make far more money than that, and there are some who are in the hole. But it's not. It that number should not scare you making a hundred and twenty in commissions. That number should not scare you. That is enough to be able to quit your job, pay your payroll taxes, self-employment, income. Almost enough for like a a reasonable escort filing. It would make sense at that point. Maybe just talk your CPA about that. and that's starting to create the job for yourself and from there you can grow it into a business. All right, tomorrow we talk about real examples of entrepreneurs who built the major success after 40. Woo woo. I love I love talking about this. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the super long episode.